Caregiving goes digital

More age in place, and independently

5:18 PM,
Nov. 30, 2013

Song Pak and his wife, Mary, live near Santa Barbara, Calif. Since Mary often travels, leaving Song alone, his daughters bought their father MyLively, a $149 wireless monitoring kit with six small accelerometers that detect movement.

Written by

Marco della Cava
USA Today

Steadily and relentlessly, a feeling of anxiety spread among the four Pak sisters as they tried in vain to call their 80-year-old father, Song Pak.

"We were really starting to worry, because our mom was visiting us and he was alone," says Suzy Pak, 43, a financial consultant from San Francisco, whose siblings also live far from their childhood home near Santa Barbara, Calif. "Just before we called the police, he finally called us. He'd been gardening all day in the yard. So we decided we had to do something."

A few weeks ago, the sisters swooped into action and bought their father MyLively, a $149 ...